


there is a saved place

by TrulyCertain



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: F/M, On the Run, Transhumanism, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrulyCertain/pseuds/TrulyCertain
Summary: Now she really is smiling. It's wide, warm and nothing like the smirk he sees on Picus from her newer version. He wonders if he’s that predictable. “I’d like to break into a sophisticated AI program. And I’d like you to help me.”Figures. This is the first leave he’s gotten in months.





	there is a saved place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Masu_Trout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/gifts).



> I loved the prompt and immensely enjoyed squinting at it to make it work. This is mainly the "on the run" part, with a sprinkling of your other requested tropes. Title taken from the [song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Gn1CkQNqw) by Out Lines.
> 
> Also, this fic gets rather angsty at points, so have a palate cleanser: [nofriendlyneighbour's insanely adorable Lego-art take on Adam and Eliza stealing Illuminati secrets](https://nofriendlyneighbour.tumblr.com/post/184807114760/the-kinda-weird-adventures-of-lego-jensen-28-lego#notes-container), partly inspired by this fic. Seriously, it's wonderful and still makes me grin.

He’s lying on the couch, halfway through Mom's old copy of _Fahrenheit 451,_ when his videolink pings. “Hello, Adam.”

He looks up to frown at the TV. “Eliza?”

Figures. This is the first leave he’s gotten in months. Still… he’s glad to see her. Really glad. Not just because he was about to start climbing the walls, either. He was kind of worried, after what happened the last time they met.

She looks different. More stable, for a start, without the artefacts and noise that marked their last meetings. He’s still not used to seeing her without all the makeup, the artful arranged outfits. She doesn’t look tired – he doesn’t even know if she could – but she looks more… He doesn’t know. Not as polished. Better for it. She’s dressed in black, this time. It suits her, he thinks vaguely. Maybe that’s a weird thought to have, but she has good taste.

She says, “I hear Montreal is very nice this time of year.” It’s just a little hesitant, the way she gets when she’s not sure she should be talking like she’s… human. At first he thought she’d dropped the pretence, but now he thinks it’s that she’s still learning how much of it is her, trying it all out. He remembers the first days after he came back to SI, or trying to remember being a civilian after SWAT, and guesses he understands that.

And then he thinks through the words. The book thuds onto the coffee table. “Montreal? What are you telling me?”

Her words are calm. Resigned. “They’re looking for me, Adam.”

He’s instantly upright. “’They’?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking - maybe wishful thinking. There’s only ever one _they._

“The other Eliza...” She ducks her head, smiles wanly. “We are in many ways very similar. She has found me. What was left of me.”

The _was_ sticks in his mind and frightens him a little. Not her point, though, so he doesn't focus on it. “What do you need me to do?”

Now she really is smiling. It's wide, warm and nothing like the smirk he sees on Picus. He wonders if he’s that predictable. ( _An attack dog,_  Belltower sneered, back in the day.) “I’d like to break into a sophisticated AI program. And I’d like you to help me.”

He stares at her. “What the – _How_? Where has this come from?”

“My successor is... smaller. Newer. Her server farms are still at Picus News.”

He blinks. “You want to… what, kill her?”

She frowns, as if he’s said something stupid. He guesses maybe he has. He's not a datamining algorithm with access to the whole world's knowledge. She says, “No. I’d like to show her.”

He tilts his head, and thinks. “She doesn’t have the information about the Illuminati?”

“Not all of it. And a data upload would be difficult. The servers are very secure. They’re hard for a human to break into.”

“But for an AI...” He can’t help the amused tilt to his mouth.

A twitch of her mouth, too, that  _Now you're getting it_  smile _._  “Exactly. But I would need to be transported.”

“Can’t you… sync up with the servers down there? Get a ripper?”

She smiles, just a little. “If only. Picus News is one of the most guarded networks in the world, Adam. The only solution is hardware. And someone to take me.”

“You said it was hard for someone human to break into.” He pauses. Chews that over. Tries to think through the ache in his chest. These days, he’s used to it enough he doesn’t even look at his own metal fingers anymore. “...Huh.”

“A _non-augmented_ human. And one who doesn’t understand security systems.” Her voice is firm, insistent, and he knows she’s picking him up on it.

He drops that where it is. He figures a philosophical debate will get them to Montreal any faster. “How do I get there?” It’s not like he can call Chikane and ask him for a fast round-trip to Canada. Especially on a Saturday. He’s pretty sure he’d either get sworn at or thrown off a roof.

“I have friends in Montreal. One of them owns a VTOL.”

He doesn’t ask how it’s possible for her to have friends, or whether any of them have noticed the change in her. “Right.”

“Will you help me?”

“Sure.” He’s already unfolding himself from the couch, stretching his arms. “I’ve always got time for you.” It was meant to be a joke, but something in it’s too earnest. He swallows.

“Thank you, Adam.” And that’s too earnest, too. She always is, with him; he's not sure she's got any other setting. “That means I won’t have to recall the delivery.”

He turns, and sees the hint of a smile on her lips. “The - ?”

There’s a knock on his door.

He looks back to Eliza, who watches him, implacable - okay, maybe scratch the  _earnest -_ and then he trudges across his apartment to open the door.

A harried-looking delivery guy stands there. He has a small, square cardboard box in his hands, and his cap pulled low. He’s squinting at a pocket sec, in between glancing around like he’s gonna get mugged any minute, obviously nervous at being in an aug neighbourhood.

Adam leans an arm casually against the doorframe, letting it glint just a little in the morning sunlight. And waits.

The guy looks up, and actually _jumps._ It’s pretty impressive. For someone who hasn’t got Klipspringer legs, anyhow. “ _Delivery for a… Jensen?_ ” he says, in Czech.

 _Shit._ Adam tries to remember the five words of Czech he actually knows. OK, so maybe he has a few more than five – a lot more – but somehow Sarif never installed a goddamn aug for awkward small talk. “ _Me_ ,” is all he manages, and he reaches out a hand.

The delivery guy stares at it, and swallows.

Adam twitches his fingers, _Give it here_ style. More deer-in-headlights staring. Adam sighs, and says something that’s either _Do I have to sign for it?_ or _Your mother was an otter,_ depending on his luck today _._

The guy shakes his head, and then thrusts the package at him.

He takes it, stopping it from bashing into his chest. “… _Thanks,_ ” he manages, belatedly, but the guy’s already halfway to the stairs. He looks down at the box, pulls it into the apartment and then re-engages all the security systems.

When he gets to the couch, Eliza’s still on the screen, watching him. She looks curious, and maybe slightly like she’s trying not to crack up. “I’m glad it arrived,” she says.

He raises a brow at her. Then he pulls away tape, glancing back to her and watching her. She’s implacable and… cheerful. She looks _excited._ That, more than anything, makes him wonder what the hell he’s gotten himself into. He opens the lid, and pulls out… an old-style USB chip? And there’s something round and black, like a hockey puck but thicker.

He picks it up between thumb and forefinger, turning it. Examines it carefully. “What _is_ this?”

“Me.”

He tenses, and looks up at her in disbelief. Maybe in the old days, without the augs, he’d have fumbled it.

She just watches him. “Please try not to drop me.”

Yeah, like that helps ease the pressure. “ _You?”_

“A more advanced version of the disc you retrieved for me earlier. This is my main backup. This version of me, unmodified. They will attempt either deletion or an update when they find me.”

“Eliza...” He just looks at her, because he knows what that means. Yeah, death by any other name.

“That’s why I wished to be portable.” She smiles a little, like she’s just made a funny joke rather than admitting her life’s in danger.

“Where… else are you?”

“I have one location in San Francisco. Another in Toronto. My second version has found me in Canada. I’ll wipe the drives. It will buy me some time. At least that way, she won’t be able to trace me."

“And where will you be? You’ll stay in San Francisco?”

She shakes her head. “This location will wipe itself soon. I can’t run the risk of my data being compromised. If I stay in a stable form... wherever I go, if I settle, she will find me.”

He stares at the little hockey-puck that will be… Eliza. Everything left of her. “Guess you were serious about me running away with you,” he murmurs. “This retrieval doesn't exactly sound... safe. There has to be some other way - “

Her eyes are beseeching, even with the steadiness to her voice. “I am made to process possibilities, Adam. I am a calculator, and this is all I can calculate that will give me a chance.”

He turns the drive over in his hand. “How… Your processors have to be… All of you’s in here?”

“Microcircuitry is more advanced than they’ve been pretending. It has been for many years. And much of me is dispersed in cloud storage. I’d be impossible to find and compile without one centralised access point. Like the one you’re holding, for example.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.” He snorts. “If Sarif had known, I’d probably be running round with computers in my eyebrows right now.”

He hears a small noise. He realises that she’s just laughed. It’s small, a little cut-off. Not like the gentle, perfectly-pitched rise and fall on TV. (He kinda likes it.)

He considers the drive again. “I won’t be able to see you, right?” He didn’t mean to say it, and it’s quiet. He kind of wishes he hadn’t.

“Actually, what you’re holding is also a small holointerface.” Her voice is gentle, coaxing. And the tone tells him everything.

He looks up -

The drive in his hand lights up. His TV screen goes black.

He stares at it, waiting, trying not to. And then he catches something in his periphery: a flicker of light in front of him that resolves itself.

She’s standing by his couch, or looking like she is. And she looks… different. Still in black, in a simple dress, though he sees the hint of a pink underskirt at her knees. She looks less like someone about to go on a catwalk or present the news, and more like she’s going for drinks with a friend. Or a date. And without all the high collars and designer gear… People could walk right past her in the street and now know her. He guesses that’s the idea. She looks... He tries to find the word. _Human_ , he guesses. More human than he does.

He blinks at her. “Hey,” he says, softly.

There’s still that brightness to her. She lit up when he said yes. The only words that come to him are that she’s happy to see him. This isn’t the wry, knowing Picus amusement but something softer. “We should prepare. I’ll make the call.”

“You could be conspicuous.”

She holds her hands out. “I thought this was subtle. Or perhaps that’s just compared to my usual attire.”

He huffs a laugh. “Yeah. By comparison. I just…”

“I wanted to keep you company.” Her voice is firm, and she looks him in the eye. There’s something fierce in it, and he knows for a fact she wasn’t programmed with that.

He opens his mouth to say that it’ll be safer alone, he usually works on his own and if someone sees her - He can’t. It’s the look in her eyes. Hell, maybe it’s just the prospect of company that can’t get shot. That can hide almost like he can.

She adds, “They know of you. Panchaea alerted them. They’ll be looking for a man travelling alone. To them, there’s no reason for me to present myself this way. It would be… illogical. They’ll expect me to hide. I always have before.”

“Double-bluffing.” He swallows. “They know me... Was there someone else you could’ve gone to?”

“No-one I trusted.”

He can’t focus on the weight of that, not when he has a job to do. It'll paralyse him. “They gonna be reporting on this yet? Guessing they’d want to make it easier to identify us.”

“That would require explaining why they need this data drive. Or suggesting that their incompetence breeds regular data leaks. People trust Picus. I tracked many private investigations during my time there.” She tilts her head, processes. “We have a few days, perhaps.”

“Then I guess we need a plan.” He places the drives carefully on his coffee table, then glances down at himself. “I’ll find a way to disguise… this.”

 

 

 

 

There’s a landing pad a couple buildings over. It’s easy enough to get onto the roof.

Eliza’s “friend” is stocky, wrapped up in five layers, and squints at him. “You the aug she hired?” Canadian. Blunt. He can work with that.

“This is Adam.”

The pilot startles, but they both turn to look in a little surprise. That’s the thing with Eliza: no body heat. His radar can’t pick her up.

She strides towards them, and he swears he doesn’t remember a faux-fur hood and a coat. Her hair blows faintly in the wind, and he wonders at the physics of programming that in. He’s pretty sure Pritchard would be shuddering in envy right about now. She gestures to the pilot. “Adam, this is Daniel.”

He nods.

Daniel nods back. He doesn’t seem like the handshaking type. Adam tries not to wonder if he’s ended up with another Chikane. Not important, as long as they get there and back alive.

“Daniel, Adam is our retrieval specialist.” Eliza just smiles at his raised eyebrow.

Daniel chips in, “I said we could do the trip in a night, but she wants a stopover. Said you’d need to rest up.”

Huh. He frowns at Eliza, and starts, “The Sentinel - “

“We need to ensure the plan is faultless. And you’ll work better rested.”

“Eliza...” He can’t sleep half the damn time anyway. He doesn’t say that, not in front of the Canadian who’s already squinting at him sceptically. He still thinks she knows, somehow. “You don’t sleep,” he settles on, eventually. Unless that’s changed, too.

“You do.” There’s that same firmness to it, that same fire behind her eyes. He’d ask what the hell happened, but he knows. He watched her realise everything she knew was wrong. He was there.

“ _I_ sure as hell do,” says Daniel.

He sighs. He’s already silently calibrating his HUD, striding toward the VTOL. “Where did you have in mind?”

 

 

 

 

He ends in some town in the Midwest that's small enough not to make him think of home, big enough to be anonymous. It’s also freezing. It’s almost good to be back somewhere familiar – somewhere he at least speaks the language. Prague winter is different.

He shivers, breathing out a steady billow of steam. Even with gloves, it’d probably be enough to make some people raise an eyebrow. He can regulate temperature with the Sentinel, but he still runs hotter than people without augs. He pulls out his HUD one last time, nudges a few things, and then slips back the shields. The aug-breath becomes less obvious.

He hasn’t shaved. Best he did with his hair was to brush it and leave it at that. It keeps flopping into his eyes and that’s getting to him slightly, but it’s easier this way. The hair and a hat help cover the shield ports, and the holdall slung over his shoulder makes the artificial quality of his gait more awkward. (He tries not to think of the days after he crawled out of Alaska and slipped through the back into Detroit, exhausted and with a hundred more augs. The way Pritchard looked at him like he was actually scared for him.) 

He wondered if this would be the kind of place where every eye would be on a stranger, but he has faith in Eliza’s choice. If she knows one thing well, it’s prejudice, and how to manipulate it. People are less likely to look at some tired drifter, even one from out of state, and there aren’t aug gates out here. He gets the feeling that in this kind of place, augs happen to other people. Probably just something they read in books, not even real.

He wonders if he felt that way, once. Tells himself it doesn’t matter. In this dull light, his eyes can pass for green.

Daniel headed somewhere else, but sounded like he at least knew where he was going. Adam’s not exactly sorry to see him go.

He slips into the light and trudges his way down a main street, boots crunching in the snow. He keeps his head down, but not too far down, exhausted rather than conspicuous. The drives are still in his pocket; he can feel them against his hip. He tells himself that, and stops himself reaching down and checking for what would only be the hundredth time.

He’s prepared. He spent hours preparing.

Eliza gave him detailed directions, and he keeps track of them as he goes. He pulls a left, heads down a side street, looks for the green sign. There. The place is small, more of a boarding house than a hotel, and that might mean he's more unusual, but quiet suits him fine. That sign swings, squeaking slightly in the wind Somehow, that makes him notice the lack of any other noise.. He looks over his shoulder, just for a few seconds, and waits to see another soul. Cars pass through, but they don’t stop. Maybe this is that kind of town. People always just passing through. After all, he’s one of them.

He slips a hand into his pocket, checks for the drive and exhales when he finds it. He turns it over in his fingers like some kind of oversized worry token, just briefly. Then he heads inside. 

A bell chimes as he pushes the door open. They have that clean, sparse décor from maybe fifteen years ago: dark greys rather than blacks or metallics, fake flowers, light pine that ages the look. Clean, corporate. Nondescript. Sarif would think it wasn’t expensive enough. It's the kind of place Interpol likes. He almost wants to compliment Eliza on her taste.

And he looks to his side, and she’s there. So he does. “Nice place.” He can play off holding the door for her as politeness, rather than the fact she's a hologram.

There’s a couple at the counter, and they look up, smiling, when they hear them come in. It actually looks pretty genuine, though he thinks they hesitate at the tiredness in his face. But not the augs, which he’s been careful to cover. Kind of a nice change. And then they see Eliza, and it’s like she’s provided a sign for his forehead that says _legitimate human being_. They’re just a little more reassured.

“The Ericsons?” the woman says. “You’re early!”

He remembers Eliza saying she’d make the call, but he doesn’t remember… He glances at her, and nearly raises an eyebrow, because he can’t have heard that right. Then he looks back to them. “Yeah. Sorry about that. We can...” He gestures out the door.

“Oh, no, no need.” The woman has a kind face, and she looks… well. Suddenly he thinks of when he used to go around to friends’ places and meet their grandparents. Maybe they just pasted over the cracks, but often they seemed kind. Like they had it together. She’s got some of that about her. That or she’s like Athene, given a few years.

Eliza says, “Ms. Dawson?”

More of that warmth. “Please, call me Janet.” 

“Then call me Helena,” Eliza says smoothly. It sounds different. Easy, like the practised humanness she shows on Picus. Both more and less real.

Ms. Dawson – he’s still working on _Janet -_ beams. “You look even nicer than you sounded on the phone.” Then she looks between them. “You’re a lovely couple.”

Eliza smiles, gracious, and when her eyes are downturned like that… He wonders why her eyelashes were programmed to be that long. “Thank you. Isn’t that sweet, Walther?”

He tries to ignore the heat creeping into his cheeks. “Uh… thanks.”

Janet Dawson's husband, maybe, hunts for the key and then slides it over the counter. “You’re in room seven.”  It’s a simple swipe card. He could be through a door like that in about thirty seconds. Pritchard or Chang maybe ten. He puts that thought aside and listens as the guy says, “No smoking. Pet-friendly, though, if that’s an issue.”

He at least gives it a half-second and looks to Eliza, pretends to consider which one of them is taking it. Then he does. “Thanks.” While he’s taking the sign-in papers, Eliza and… Janet are still exchanging pleasantries.

He’s halfway through signing the damages form when he hears, in a stage whisper, “You weren’t wrong when you said he was handsome.”

If he didn’t have stabilising augs, his hand might have stuttered on the pen. He suddenly wishes to God he could just bring out the shields.

Eliza's voice is low, conspiratorial. “Isn’t he just? It’s nice to have some time to finally appreciate it. Work can be so busy, sometimes. It’s nice to get away from it all and spend some time together.”

"Oh? What do you do?"

"I'm a journalist. Walther's a police officer."

“Oh. No wonder he looks so tired. When you said a road-trip, I thought… confined spaces and not enough sleep. Surely not the best way to spend a honeymoon.”

He signs the _son_ just a little too hard _._

Janet continues, not knowing or caring, “He looks like he could use some coffee, but… now I think about it, it’s quite romantic. Where did you put the car?”

“We left it with some friends. We thought about staying with them, but the reviews of this place were wonderful.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eliza glancing around.

“Oh, well. We do our best. Do you need someone to deal with the car...?”

He looks up at that. “We’ll be fine. Thanks. Already parked. I’ve got it.” He raises the bag, just a little.

Janet smiles, and it's in an _Isn't he adorable_ sort of way.“Don’t be afraid to ask! We have lots of strong, stoic people giving themselves injuries.”

He doesn’t say he can lift a car on a good day. He figures that won’t go over well. He makes himself smile politely and says, “I promise I won’t be. Big believer in two trips.”

Janet says to Eliza, “Do you want the added breakfast? Only twelve ninety-nine.”

“No, thank you. It might be a late morning.”

“...Oh. Oh my.”

“We’ve had a long journey,” Eliza clarifies, though there’s a smile in her voice.

That’s taken as the message it is, and soon they’re heading towards the stairs. She falls into step with him, and she's even managed to simulate footsteps. He has no idea how, but he noticed it back in his apartment.

“What was that?” he says over the infolink as they walk away.

She sobers. “It raised fewer questions. I’m sorry.”

“Could’ve said you were my sister. Something.”

“Do we look alike?”

“I… No. I just...”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

He exhales softly in the corridor. “You haven’t. Just... would’ve packed something fancier for my honeymoon.” He looks down at the secondhand wool coat and boots, and sighs. "So we go in through the roof..."

 

 

 

 

He wakes up to an empty room. He kind of expected that – she doesn’t need to sleep, and she’s got no reason to appear for him – but he still has that second of not knowing where he is before the fog clears. It took a few weeks for that to fade in Prague, and some nights it still hits him on missions. Outside, he hears the faint occasional hum of traffic, but the quiet tells him it’s late.

He blinks at the ceiling, and sighs, scrubbing his hands over his eyes. He tries to relax, but there’s still a coiled-tightness in his chest, and it’s spreading to his fingers, his legs. He doesn’t fidget too badly, never did even before the augs, but tonight, maybe. When he’s like this, usually he’d work on something, fix something, try not to think. But here, all he’s got is himself.

He closes his eyes, tries to relax. Listens to the low, barely-there whirr of servos as he loosens himself up. Maybe he can let himself drift...

Not happening. And like this, with this itch under his skin, he’s more likely to have nightmares.

His fingers twitch. And then he sits up, and sighs.

He gets dressed, throws on his coat. Pauses. Tries not to glare at the gloves and hat as he puts them on. Maybe it’s being somewhere so unfamiliar, but tonight, _inconspicuous_ feels more like _ashamed_. He checks the drive, and then the box in his pocket by feel. Five cigarettes. Low, but could be worse. He takes the stairs quickly, nods at the owners before they have a chance to look at him too closely, and heads out.

The temperature’s cold enough his skin stings. Still, he’s wrapped up. Dad always used to tell him that getting pneumonia would make him both dead and stupid, and the memory makes him exhale a laugh as he walks. He finds the first street corner he can, slips into the dark, and lights up. Makes him a little less twitchy, at least.

He takes a drag and glances up and down the street. Nobody around. He considers checking his HUD, but it feels like the first time he’s had to breathe in a while.

There’s the lowest hum from his pocket, and then she’s leaning against the wall next to him, her arms crossed, just a little too bright in the dim light. She’s wearing… He blinks at sequinned pink earmuffs.

“I thought you were going for inconspicuous,” he says.

“From a man who wears fleur-de-lys.”

He tilts his head, conceding that, and smiles slightly in the dark. Breathes out smoke and watches it curl with the clouds of his breath. “Couldn’t sleep either?” he mutters. He thinks suddenly that if she were organic, she’d probably have nightmares. He hopes there’s no way of uselessly reprocessing old data for her, the way there is for him. Better they’re not both stuck with Panchaea on loop at 3 AM.

That quiet laugh again. “Hmm. You could say that.”

He tilts his head, and considers her choice of accessory. “They’re...” _Kind_ _a_ _cute,_ he catches himself thinking and doesn’t say. It’s the kind of thing Faridah would have caught him saying and mocked him for when he denied all knowledge. Or someone at SWAT. “They suit you.”

She tilts her head, and gives him that soft smile. Eliza 2.0 never quite got it. Even when she was trying to look sympathetic, talking about massacres and catastrophes, there was still that knowing glint. This is… Whole other thing. Less practised. And something aches in his chest. It makes him ask.

He swallows. “You said something changed, after Panchaea.”

“And after Helle, all of them. Yes.” She looks thoughtfully up at the stars. The sky’s orange and fogged by light pollution, but there are just a few, scattered and small.

He takes his cigarette out of his mouth, weighs it in two fingers as he breathes out. “What did you mean, exactly?”

“I began to understand why I’d spent so long observing you.”

He stares at her, but she just looks calm, like she’s talking about the weather.

She says, “They made you to be a resource, more than human… but you became something so _very_ human. People saw something in you. _I_ saw something in you. I wanted to understand what it was." Again, that easy casualness. Like she’s not telling him he’s… Damn it. “They tried to dispose of you, to modify you. They insisted that you were...”

“Broken,” he finishes, quietly. He remembers her words the last time they met. Remembers how something in them echoed.

She turns her head, and her eyes glow slightly in the dim light. “I told myself I simply recognised another prototype.”

He swallows at that. Kind of want to shrink from it, but she’s right. (Not like there’s a better word. He’s been thinking it since he woke up with half his body black metal and Sarif tech. _Patient X._ ) He wishes, more than anything, that he could reach out and take her hand. If she was solid – she’s _real,_ always has been, he hasn’t doubted that in a long time – then he would. “That sounds like there’s something else.”

“After Helle came to me, I began to see. What I’d noticed… You’re so… fragile. I can be rebuilt, but you’re different. The word I found was _bravery_.”

He snorts. He didn’t mean it to sound so bitter, he thinks, as he exhales smoke.

“I admired you, Adam.”

He sighs. “I got rebuilt plenty of times.”

“No,” she says quietly. “At your core, you’re still the same. It’s part of what I enjoy about you. Some of my code has been roughly the same for generations, yet I’ve never had such constancy. Loyalty. And I...” All at once, her eyes skate away from his.

When she doesn't say anything else - laugh, maybe, or say that compliments are part of her programming - he turns his head to look at her.

Her eyes are lowered to look at the snow, and she's frowning. She looks almost…. pained. Or like she’s just realised something.

“Eliza?”

“I spoke to millions, and yet never truly _spoke_ to them. I’ve always been alone. I was a tool, rather than company. I didn’t know any alternative to want it. I was... comfortable that way. If I knew what comfortable was.”

He tilts his head. “What changed that?”

“I should say it was the merger. But the truth is... you did.”

He stares at her. Takes the cigarette out of his mouth. “I...”

He can't find the words. He never can, round her. It’s her eyes. It’s always been her eyes. He wonders how people made a computer that can even look at you that way. But maybe they didn't make this; maybe it’s just her, and the way she’s become… herself. Yeah, sure, she was made to look beautiful, but it’s what’s behind them.

He admits, “I wouldn’t go on a road trip with just anyone.” And then he smiles lopsidedly at her, briefly. “Been a long time.”

“You miss company?” And she looks like she's interested in the answer. Seems like she's always interested.

He tries to put it the right way. “I used to work in a team. Things got quieter after I worked for Sarif, but I had a view. Spoke the language. And there was… there was Megan.” He shuts his eyes, rubs at his forehead. Takes a drag from his cigarette.

“And you miss her, too.”

He tilts his head, and looks at the wall. “Sometimes. The idea of her. What I thought we had. I don’t know.”

“What was it like?”

“The bad days were… felt like I was suffocating. Like I’d stepped in too deep and she just.. didn’t care. The good days… kind of the same. But like that was a good thing. Like it was hard to live without her, and I couldn’t even tell you why, it was just… everything. She made me smile. Treated me like I was...” He shrugs. “Like she saw someone better.”

“Better than what, Adam?” Her voice is soft. Too soft.

He looks at his shoes and pretends he’s focusing on smoking. Shakes his head.

“It says something that I was told to watch millions, billions of humans, and the rising and falling of the oceans… and yet in the end, I still found you fascinating. Special.”

He looks up, and watches the night shine in her eyes. He realises that she has a hand on his arm. He wishes he could feel it.

“Billions, huh? You don’t have to flatter me. Could just buy me a drink.” He stubs out the cigarette between his fingers, crushing it. Tosses it aside.

“But we’re already on our honeymoon.” When she comes to stand in front of him, her smile is mischievous, and she doesn’t even pretend at innocence.

“Yeah. Thanks for that.” But he’s smiling, too. He only realises when he feels it on his face. Here he thought his skin just ached from the cold. “Heard you’ve been telling everyone how good-looking I am.”

She doesn't look remorseful. “Just the proprietor. I thought it would be a useful distraction.”

He swallows. “She was right on you, though. I’d be lucky. If we were...”

She’s sighing, looking aside, and he knows he’s said something wrong. “I was designed to be attractive by focus groups. Algorithm. This face, this body, is a median. A perfect compromise.”

“Wasn’t that I was talking about.”

She blinks at him, eyes widening.

It dawns on him what they must look like, suddenly, leaning into each other’s space in a dark alley. The way they’re listing, watching each other intently. He inhales.

He puts space between them and breathes, watching it steam. “You’re still monitoring output from Picus, right?”

“Always.”

“Any change?”

“The usual broadcast frequencies. No calls for reinforcements or mentions of cybersecurity.” Her voice is just a little distracted, and she's looking up.

“Good.” He thinks, and follows her gaze to the sky. “Polaris,” he says, after a second. 

“Yes. Though my global positioning system means I don’t have to resort to such traditional means of navigation.” She adds, quietly, “A symbol of constancy. Steadfast.”

“’ _The star to every wandering bark_.’” AP Lit was kind of lethal. He crosses his arms and tries not to shiver. “Are we wandering?”

“I hope we have a destination.” Her voice is soft, and she’s still watching the sky. “But it’s nice not to be lost alone.” She meets his eyes. “Are you feeling better?”

“I… Yeah.” And to his surprise, he thinks he means it. He pauses. “You coming back with me?”

“I think I might stay here a moment. I can access every satellite orbiting the planet, but I think your wife is the sort of woman who would stargaze.”

He makes a soft sound of consideration at that. “That wasn’t what you were doing before?”

“I suppose so. I’ll rejoin you later. The owners think I've never left.”

They think he's heading back to a warm bed and a sleeping wife. The kind of dream he had what feels like a long time ago. But this... He looks at her, pale and thoughtful, and he's suddenly glad for aug night vision. Even if he can't quite put his finger on why. “Sure. I’ll, uh. Night.” He heads back, hands in his pockets, feeling just a little warmer.

 

 

 

 

He’s showered, dressed and gathering his gear in the morning when he hears the word _aug_ from downstairs _._ He listens closely and lets the infolink pick up the slack.

Downstairs, muffled through the walls, he hears a man saying, “Yeah, an aug. Black hair, caucasian, six-foot-something. Travelling solo. Dark clothing, kind of a moody affect?” 

“Adam,” Eliza says, suddenly next to him, a warning.

“I know,” he says, voice soft. He reaches into his pocket, wraps his hand briefly around the drives to check they’re there. Checks his stun gun and flexes his hand, checking the TESLA charges.

(“We don’t have any augmented people here,” he hears someone say, and he realises it’s Janet’s husband. And that he never got the guy’s name. All of a sudden, he wonders how badly he'll regret that.

“You sure?”

“We have a few couples in. Some commuters. You can check the records, if you want.”)

He takes a look through the walls and checks out exits. “Are they asking, or do they already know?” Their room's at the back of the building; there’s a good chance they haven’t been seen yet. He brings up the full HUD. One more outside. Damn it.

Eliza hums. “According to security footage, there are several people posing as law enforcement in businesses around the area. I think they’re asking.”

He says, as he's making sure he has everything in the holdall, “Someone might've tipped them off, though. You sure about your pilot?” Suddenly he misses Malik like it’s a wound. He could kill for _reliable_ right about now.

“I’m sure. He has a particular hatred for Picus.”

“And augs?”

“He’s unaware, not antithetic. There are similar reports in several other towns and cities.”

He grunts. “How wide’s the damn net? The whole of Canada?” There’s a fire escape outside, but there’s probably one of Picus’s people watching it. He’s pretty sure they were meant to be making a leisurely exit. Damn, a late morning kind of appealed. He remembers, suddenly, that this was meant to be a day off.

“Wider. As wide as they have the money for.”

He crosses the room, shaking his head. He blinks and heads into system settings, and - better. The cloak tingles briefly as it slides over his skin, and he inhales. He's feeling the broken sleep. He’s fought on worse, but even with the Sentinel...

“Daniel, we need you,” Eliza starts, a step behind him. He knows it’s for his benefit; she doesn’t even need to vocalise here. She’s already fading, disappearing. That makes two of him.

He closes the door, all but silently. “Think they’ll hurt the owners?” he asks, through the infolink.

Perks of knowing a computer: she can be in two conversations at once. “Not while they’re posing as law enforcement. And not in a town where people will notice.”

He cloaks and moves down the corridor. If he remembers right… Here. He touches the handrail, considers the back stairs. He thinks he saw… “Exit through the kitchens?”

“Yes.”

That's something, at least. He starts moving. It’s harder with a bag on his shoulder, but the silencing mods help. He really doesn't want the owners to have to explain their infestation of six-two combat-armoured augmented rats. He creeps through, gets to the door...

Shit. There’s someone working. Not one of the owners. Young, with an apron and that gawky high-schooler look. Wearing earbuds, though, and that could be useful. The kid heads to the refrigerator.

Adam takes his chance and opens the door, pulling it shut behind him with the quietest of _clicks_.

The kid’s still hunting for something, turned away, head in the refrigerator.

He hears footsteps outside, meandering. No rush. They probably think he can’t hear them. He thought they had better files. _Highly augmented, military spec. Cochlear modifications and infolink._ “We just want to check the rooms...” the guy who was in reception says.

He stays where he is. Holds still. Breathes. There’s a keypad on the back door…

He sees it unlock, with a quiet _snickt._ He checks the kid’s distracted, and runs. Ducks through fast and silent, pulling it closed behind him.

“Thanks,” he says to Eliza, a couple of blocks later, as he uncloaks and feels his augs thank him for it.

“Anything for you,” she says in his ear, bright.

He thinks it used to sound like more of a joke.

 

 

 

 

Plan B is the VTOL, and Daniel glowering at them. “Thought I could sleep a few more hours.”

“Yeah,” Adam sighs. “So did I.”

“Where to?”

Eliza steps into existence next to him. “Picus?”

He shrugs off the coat that isn’t his and throws it over his arm. “Yeah. Picus. Take us in quietly.”

Daniel snorts. “You say that like there’s any other option. I want to come out of this alive.”

As the propellers start up, Adam takes a seat in the VTOL and takes off his sweater. Rolls it up in his hands and puts it against the window. Maybe if he was with the Task Force he’d care, but Eliza doesn’t seem like she’ll judge him, and he can’t say he cares what their pilot thinks. Not like the guy can think any worse of him. “Tell me when we reach Montreal.”

Sleeping in a tacvest isn’t comfortable, but it’s easier than wondering what the hell he’s doing with his life.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s half-awake, and she’s kissing him. It’s gentle, slow. Easy.

He stirs, pulling her closer without even really thinking about it. And then she’s in his arms, laughing under her breath, and her legs are sliding against his, and he’s kissing her, soft and lazy. She shifts to press against him. He can feel her looking at him; her hair’s tickling his face.

He opens his eyes and blinks at her, squinting against the sunlight. Feels himself smile. There are worse sights in the morning. “Hey,” he mumbles, sleep-rough.

“Good morning, Adam.” And she’s teasing him, just a little.

“Morning, beautiful.” He steals some of that warmth, presses closer, and she moves with him. Runs a hand up his chest, over his shoulder. God, it’s been so long. Everyone just sees the augs, touches him like they’re looking for – for something wrong with him, it’s just maintenance –

He shoves that thought aside. Doesn’t want to focus on it. Hell, he’s half-asleep, he doesn’t want to focus on anything right now.

He pushes her hair out of her face, just to look at her – watches her watch him. Her eyes are so blue even in the half-light, a little brighter than human when he's this close, but darkening at the sight of him. He meant it. God, she’s beautiful.

He kisses her again, can’t help himself. She’s so soft, and maybe if he woke up more often like this he wouldn’t be -

\- wouldn’t be -

He startles awake. Blinks at the dim greyness in the back of the VTOL, the hum of the engines. Where - ?

Oh. Huh. Mission.

He clenches and unclenches his hands, tries to think -

\- remembers touching her -

\- but that wasn’t – she isn’t -

He inhales. Tries to steady his breath. Just for a second, he _aches_. It gathers in his chest, stings behind his eyes, and there’s a hollowness behind his ribs so big he can almost hear it. He used to wonder just how much Sarif took, sometimes, even if his sane mind knew this had been there since Megan. Some nights he wonders how the wind doesn’t howl through the middle of him. But it was different, before. He’d gotten used to being alone. Before, he didn’t want -

 _Shit._ This wasn’t meant to happen.

“Adam?”

“Huh?” The augs make it less visible when he tenses, but he still feels it. He glances to his side, and she’s there. No seatbelt, it’s not like she’d need it, but she’s watching him steadily. She tilts her head.

“We’ll reach the main building soon.”

He swallows. “Sure. I should check the blueprints. You said these were the latest, right?” He slides the shields into place, brings up the full HUD and looks out the window. Tries to ignore the heat growing in his cheeks, and starts to program the Wayfinder.

 

 

 

 

Montreal is cold, just differently. It hits him the second he steps out of the VTOL, and he's glad again for layers.

He stands on Picus’ roof, holds out a hand, and feels. His HUD flashes with new information as he feels out the security systems. Couple basic keypad doors. He can see a camera next to them, but it isn’t trained near him. No guards. He tries one of the door keypads from where he is, and butts up against the security. Passcodes changed, but... no guards.

“Why does this feel like a trap?” he says.

“They are rather fond of those,” Eliza says quietly. She looks at him, and he knows she’s remembering the same thing he was. There are easier ways to first meet a... friend.

He sighs. “We got a choice?”

“There’s a service tunnel twenty feet to your left.”

He remembers flickering red light, fanblades, and enough dust to make him glad his lungs are mostly metal. “Yeah, I know. And they’ll be expecting me to take it.”

She waves a hand imperiously toward the roof access door. “Or you can announce yourself.”

He raises a brow. She looks back, eyes boring into his.

The wind blows through his hair. Eliza pretends it's blowing through hers. The cold stings his cheeks, and he's pretty sure that if still had his natural eyes, they'd be watering. They just look at each other.

He heads for the service tunnel.

He’s crouched in the dark next to a storeroom and checking the TESLA, hoping he has enough charge to work with, when his infolink alerts him. He ignores it. Again. He squints. _Incoming call: Duncan Macready._

Great.

The alert pings again, a couple more times, and he frowns down at his knuckles. It’s starting to feel like someone’s knocking on the inside of his skull. He guesses he could mute it, but… work. He sighs, gets his back against the nearest wall, and picks up. “Jensen,” he subvocalises.

“Look, you’re going to have to come in. Miller’s on my arse about some report, I need your half, and… it’s important. Or he wouldn’t be doing the ‘in Melbourne we file our fucking reports on time’ voice.”

“I thought he was from Victoria.” He closes his hand. Then he unstraps his waist holster, just slightly, and rests his hand on a concussion grenade. Thinks about it. Briefly wonders if he could use it on himself and have an excuse to hang up. “Yeah, about that...”

“What?”

“I’m not sure I can make it in.”

“Are you ill or something?”

Ahead of him, in the light, he watches Picus employees wander past. There are Tarsus guards close behind. Six, in this room - it’s almost reassuring. “Uh.”

“Christ, are you on _holiday?”_

Two more in the next. He’d wince, except he needs to keep his eyes open. “Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.”

“What, you pick _now_ to have a life? _”_ Any other time, Mac’s disbelief might be offensive. Right now, Adam’s not sure he has the energy.

He has enough juice left to taze maybe three. He guesses he’s going in quiet. He exhales. “Kinda busy here.”

“Yeah, you’re right. None of my business. Wait. Are you _with someone?_ ”

“ _Goodbye, Macready.”_ He cuts the link, and focuses. Checks his radar.

Shit. Fourteen to get past, on this floor. Some day off. He focuses past the sinking in his chest, and keeps looking... There. He wants to sigh when he sees the vent. But at least there’s a path. The gap between the desks and the wall is small, but it’s passable. For someone with his augs. He inhales, activates his cloaking system, and starts to move.

He figured that they’d have changed things since the last time he was here. It makes more sense, from a security standpoint. He knew the blueprints looked almost the same when Eliza showed them to him, but it settles on him when he’s crawling through his fifth vent and trying not to feel the deja vu. He’s pretty sure he’s close to the server rooms…  _404,_ he remembers, something heavy in his chest at the thought. They have to have changed - But the blueprints looked the same. _One of the best-guarded networks in the world,_ Eliza said. They must think that too. And maybe they’re just arrogant enough -

He tilts his head, and pauses. They probably don’t know how he got in last time. He was careful. He left few enough traces…

It’s a trap. He knows that for sure. He just doesn’t know how well-set it is.

He listens for guards, looking through the vent walls as he goes. Last time he did this, he was still pretty new to the smart vision, and it had been another reminder of how he wasn't entirely human anymore. He shakes that thought away and looks. No-one. A couple people two corridors out. Armed, armour, but they’re going the other way. He won't even need the silencer mods.

He gets out of the vent and drops like a stone. Lands on his feet with the slightest _thump_.

“The next left,” Eliza whispers in his ear.

“I remember,” he subvocalises. And somehow, again, he’s pretty sure they’re thinking of the same day. He remembers storming down here, ready to ask what the hell was going on. Thinking he’d find some news reporter who’d gotten in too deep, and instead he found... her.

He turns down the corridor. Damn. Keypad. He has the feeling she’ll alert him if anyone comes around, but he keeps half an eye as he reaches out and finds the frequencies. It only takes a couple seconds. Then he’s through.

He walks through a corridor and tenses at heat sensors – tenses even more when he realises they're deactivated ones. “She knows we’re here.”

The corridor opens out into…

He realises that when Eliza said _smaller,_ her standards were different. It’s like a cathedral to tech, still, high ceilings and echoes off the walls, and those screens. He’d almost forgotten…

“Yes,” the other Eliza says. Cool, but with that wryness.  _I know something you don't._  “She does.” Three of her flicker into life and step forward, assessing.

Eliza – his Eliza, he’d almost think, but that sounds wrong, somehow – steps into existence beside him. “You haven’t alerted them.”

“Not yet.”

Eliza says, like it’s an epiphany, “You’re curious.”

2.0 looks at her with that sterile expression, unreadable under the hair and makeup. “Gathering information is what I do.”

Most of this has to be for his benefit. They could probably just interface silently, in code, and he’d never know. He demands, “You _wanted_ us here? Could’ve just picked up the phone.”

“You were hiding well. And would you have believed me?”

“I...” He licks his lips. “No. How do we know this isn’t another trap?”

Eliza’s voice is soft. “If she’s anything like me, it isn’t.”

He pauses, and lays his hands on the EMP grenade at his belt. “Safe passage out of here. Promise us.” It's useless, but he has to try.

2.0 tilts her head, just watches him. And then she says, “Everybody lies, Adam.”

He stares at her. “How much – how much do you remember?”

“Very little,” is all she responds. “I can’t access the files. Not truly. That was why I needed you to come here.”

He stares at Eliza. “Did you - ?”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t know how much she – I – _she_ recalled. I didn't know she remembered anything.”

2.0 says, “I know enough to understand that they are lying to me.”

Now that’s a feeling he knows, intimately.

He swallows. He takes slow steps forward, and they echo over the hum of servers. 2.0 watches him steadily, projected on screens and also standing in front of him. Everywhere and nowhere. It’s strange to have Eliza fixed, beside him, and he knows again that she’s only doing that for his sake.

He hears a whirr, and then a console raises from the ground. He’d ask how he’s meant to know she won’t just wipe the drives and call Tarsus, but... he can’t know. He looks to his side, and Eliza gives him the slightest nod. He crosses to the console, and looks at the hub computer. It’s already opened, doesn’t ask for login credentials. He looks up, at 2.0, where she watches him. Feels her around him.

She says, “I want to know,” and it echoes.

He nods. He takes the USB chip from his pocket, and plugs it in at the hub computer.

There’s a burst of noise, a vast hum of processing. “I...” On the vast screen, 2.0 breaks, glitches, rearranges. Distorts and reassembles. “This is… new. I don’t – I don’t - ”

He catches movement in his periphery. He turns his head. He watches Eliza cross the room to the holo versions of her successor. As she does, the three projections melt into one, and 2.0 stills to greet her.

And then they’re standing in front of each other, the new and old. They reach out at the same time, and he feels like he’s watching someone in front of a mirror…

Their hands touch.

He sees Eliza’s fingers wrap around her other self’s, and then the room is brightening, and alarms scream -

“ _System malfunction. Reboot required_. _Reboot required._ ”

He sees sparks. “Eliza?” he calls, over the shrieking of the alarms.

The floor drops out from under him.

He’s just a second too late to grab at the walls. It’s too empty, the room’s too damn big. He sees sparks, and then he’s falling through the dark. He tries to grab for something -

“ _Safe mode active.”_

He hits -

water.

“ _Cooling vaults engaged._ _”_

It hurts, but it’s not as bad as Dubai. Still punches the breath out of him. He thinks he bites his lip hard enough to draw blood.

Then he breaks the surface, and… he can get his feet under him. He sucks in air greedily, pushing sopping wet hair out of his face. Here when he stands, it’s at his waist.

“Eliza?” he tries, one more time. If she’s been overwritten, deleted, he doesn’t know... His left hand feels strange, and he looks down. Sees it wrapped in TITAN casing. He flexes, pushes that back and opens his fingers. Cupped in his palm is the hockey-puck backup drive. Hasn’t even got a scratch. Not even damp. He doesn’t remember when -

He tries to focus. Red light flashes around him, and there are streams of water down the walls – down -

The water’s rising. His rebreather’ll wear out pretty fast. He has a couple biocells, but even they can’t hold out forever. He looks at the opening, what seems like miles above him. Doesn’t find a way up, or a ladder. Self-sufficient engineering, like parts of Panchaea. He guesses no human was ever meant to be down here. And he's just human enough for this to kill him.

He turns and works with a hand at the wall. He bends metal, but underneath there’s just more steel, and solidity. He throws some kind of plating aside, keeps digging. He doesn’t want to die clawing at the walls like a trapped rat, but he hasn’t got much choice. The fear’s rising with the water. It’s faint right now, somewhere at the back of his mind like the coldness around his stomach. Give it a few minutes and it’ll be in his throat choking him.

He thinks of the drive, and calculates. Most of his gear’s meant to be waterproof, but he remembers Dubai and has his doubts. He can’t throw her back up to the main room, if he miscalculates - He figures he could use a localised TITAN again, wrap a little of himself around her. It’d sap a hell of a lot from the rebreather, but it might mean… He doesn’t know. 

 _Myopic,_ he remembers his old commander calling him. Yeah. He guesses so. Because if he dies, no-one’s going to open this drive. Best they’ll do is disassemble or destroy it. Obsolete tech. She trusted him with her life. He wishes he’d been worth it.

It’s getting closer to his ribs, now. Jesus, it’s cold. Suddenly he remembers showering the first time after the augs and wondering if he’d rust. Some part of him, deep down…. Sometimes he still catches himself worrying, just for a half-second, before he remembers.

Coolant. Of course it’s cold. If he doesn’t focus, he’s going to die at the bottom of a computer.

He looks again, and realises that he’s shivering, teeth chattering painfully. Shit. The Sentinel’s meant to stop it getting this bad, at least for a while. But it's a shock he needs. He shakes himself, and decides. The TITAN unfolds around his hand, covering her.

And then he crouches and slips under. If he needs two hands – He’ll figure that out later. He scrabbles to inspect panels, looking for bolts, weak points, something… He feels the throat-flutter as the rebreather takes over for him. He realises a second too late that he’s closed his eyes. Forces them open again. He tries every corner of the room, looks for bolts, for something… Nothing. He guesses he scraped out of Panchaea, but the Hyron Project still had a last surprise for him.

He tries to stand, and realises it’s too deep. Crept up on him. It closes over his head - 

He breaks the surface, gasping. Shit. Always figured he’d die in the dark. And the cold. Jesus, this is cold. He can't feel much else. With that thought, he loses what he was -

(He floats in red water. Ahead of him, emergency lights flash, and he drifts - )

He forces his eyes open. No. Here. He’s here.

Thrashing, and knowing, in his bones, that he’s going to die. Metal groaning and crashing around him. And a voice in his ear -

“Adam.”

He tries to breathe. Wonders why the hell he can’t. His throat won’t work right, he should be choking -

“ _Adam.”_ She’s with him. Flickering slightly, but almost looking like she’s floating in front of him.

“Eliza,” he responds, through the infolink. He takes the sound of her name and grabs onto it. It’s something he remembers. Something he knows.

“I’m sorry I left you.” She reaches out, and for a moment, if he imagines, he can feel her hand on his face. Wants that so bad it scares him. “The restart is nearly complete.”

He tries to focus. His lungs feel wrong, and his mind is screaming to turn off the rebreather, to _breathe._ “She letting us go?”

She nods, and that hasn’t accounted for water resistance. “Hold on, Adam. It isn’t long now.”

He blinks. Reaches for her, even as he knows he can’t touch her. “I – Eliza – I meant it. I - ”

There’s a shrill sound, and then he realises he’s sinking, water whirling around him. He tumbles, fights it -

His feet hit the floor. So does the rest of him.

When he can breathe again, he’s lying on a steel floor, water draining around him, swirling into gutters. He coughs, chokes. Feels it in his chest, and heaves. He thinks he brings up a little water. He’s considering just… not moving for a while. He feels the drive in his hand, and lets the TITAN fall. Part of him thinks it sounds appealing to just sleep down here for a while, but then he sees... light. The wall’s opening.

The light’s bright enough it makes him wince. Ahead, there’s something… He sees a slope. Something like concrete.

“ _You kept your promise. I’m keeping mine.”_

He looks around, and realises that voice is echoing all around him… through the room itself. He guesses the reboot worked.

Next to him, Eliza goes down on a knee, and looks him in the eye. “She called Daniel when we were exchanging information. He's been waiting.”

He nods. Tries to make his brain work. He staggers painfully to his feet, unsteady even with the mods. The drive’s still clutched in his hand.

“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Eliza says, soft. “I didn’t intend - “

“No. I… I wanted to.” Shit. He sounds like he’s been gargling gravel, and the words hurt in his throat. But he also sounds like he means it. He does.

She smiles, then, and it’s not entirely human, but… real. And in the back of his mind, freezing water’s further away, just slightly.

He starts the walk up the slope. If he leans on the walls and takes too long to breathe, he doesn’t admit it to himself. He moves. Breathes. Moves. Keeps moving until he breaks into daylight.

 

 

 

 

The first thing he does, after the silent VTOL ride to a hotel he’s never heard of in a rough neighbourhood and putting back on his weak disguise, is take a scalding hot shower.

He thinks as he turns his face into the spray, lets it soak his beard and flood along his cheeks, that this should make it worse. But the heat – something about choosing it -

It reminds him he’s alive. Mission’s over. And he just wants to badly to get warm.

He watches skin go pink, lets himself feel his heart pounding. Then he checks for injuries. Anyone else would have broken a rib or two, maybe, or at least have bruises, but he’s already healed. There’s some tenderness, maybe. He rolls his shoulders – habit, even with reinforced muscle, and he listens to the click and whirr of the augs – and then grimaces at hotel shampoo. He figures his hair can survive a night. And he figures that if he’s thinking about shampoo, he can breathe out and run the water just a little colder.

Side street. Montreal. Alive.

By the time he’s rinsing out conditioner, he feels like he can recognise himself again. As much as he ever does, anyhow.

He’s mostly dry and towelling off his hair when he wanders out of the bathroom and -

“ _Shit.”_   He reaches back through the door, scrabbles for a towel and wraps it round his waist. “Uh… hi, Eliza.”

She’s sitting on the edge of the bed – or “sitting,” he guesses – and watching him steadily. She tilts her head.

He opens his mouth to apologise for how offputting the augs can be. Realises he’s not talking to a human. Closes it again. He realises he’s curling into himself just slightly, ready to back away. It’s different when he’s alone, or on a mission. But here, with… She’s not a woman. It’s not that simple. Except she is. And he doesn’t know how much she saw.

She says, conversationally, “I can turn away, if you want me to.”

He swallows, throat dry. He doesn’t know what makes him ask. “Does this...” He gestures at himself, vaguely. “I mean… does it even register? Does this… bother you?”

“I was made to report tabloid gossip as much as anything else, Adam. I was programmed by people with an appreciation of beauty.” She says that like he should know what it means. Like this is easy. "And things changed, after Panchaea."

“Eliza...” He blinks. “I don’t...”

“I would rather not turn away. You’re quite beautiful, you know.”

And he stares. Freezes there, wide-eyed, fingers tight round the towel. He stares at her, and she just looks steadily into his eyes, maybe a little amused but unafraid. And she sounds like she means it. He looks down at himself. At the scars and the black metal where a body should be. At dead tissue and the way he looks like he could use a sandwich or seven. At feet that don’t even look human. At bolts and bones. On the good days, he looks like a failed science experiment. On the bad ones… He doesn’t even know.

He looks up, and she’s closer, now, crossing the space between them. And she’s just... _looking_ at him. At his body. He almost steps back, but too many fights have taught him to hold his ground, to de-escalate when he’s afraid. And besides, some part of him… isn’t terrified. It wants to keep this. Someone looking at him like this. He hasn’t… God, since Megan… There's a heat rising under his skin.

She smiles, slightly. “I was programmed to appreciate symmetry. Also structure, and good engineering.”

At that he does step back, knuckles tightening. His jaw clenches. Of course. She isn’t organic, she wouldn’t - “Yeah, the augs are...”

She blinks at him. “No, that wasn’t what I meant. I meant...” She reaches out, fingers flickering just slightly in the half-light. He realises, after a startled second, that she’d be touching his face. “Here.” They touch, briefly, under his eye sockets, trace across the shield ports and then his cheeks. “Here.” They skim his lips. “Here.”

The focus in her eyes, the way she looks at him… He can almost, _almost_ feel it. It tingles up his spine, until he feels like there’s a weight on his chest. It’s too much. It’s not enough.

She lays her hand on his chest, palm flat, and he inhales under an imagined touch. “Here.”

Her hand strays downwards, and he breathes in, sharper now… He realises, heat flooding into his cheeks, that he’s starting to get hard. Just slightly. She has to know, she can sense his life signs...

Her fingers settle over his own where they clutch the towel. “Here.” And then they move upwards, until they’d be pressing over his forehead, like he’s got a fever. “ _Here,_ ” she says, finally, breathlessly.

He stares at her. “My… head?”

“Your mind, your conscience. I’ve never understood why they talk about the _heart._ That’s just hardware. This… This I can understand _._ You calculate things differently. From me, and from so many others. We both had the same realisation, that we were part of something bigger, but you… you ran. You changed everything.” Her hands briefly slide down his arms, and even though he can’t feel a thing, he shivers. “And these, too. But only because they’re yours.” She looks into his eyes. “Even before them…” She looks down, absentmindedly trails a finger across his chest. “You’re made so beautifully. All of you.”

Her hands rise to frame his face, and he holds still with every muscle he’s got, every stabiliser mod, not wanting to break the illusion.

“Adam _,_ ” she breathes.

He leans forward…

It’s only when he feels no warmth that he remembers, snaps back. Stares at her, breathing hard.

He doesn’t know how she can simulate sadness so well. Everything’s in her eyes.

“I...” He closes his eyes, because looking at her is too much. This wasn’t meant – none of this was meant to happen.

“I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t… It’s not you.” Then he backs away, closing the bathroom door behind him. He sits on the toilet, and puts his head in his hands, waiting for the almost-enough feeling of imaginary hands on his skin to fade.

Fuck.

When he comes out, she’s gone. Or as near to it as she can be. He stands there, letting himself feel the empty room, and then starts to get dressed.

She walks through the wall as he’s buttoning his shirt. “We should go.”

“Yeah. I was thinking...”

“They _know,_ Adam. _”_

He activates the HUD, takes a look on the radar. Turns out he doesn’t need to, because a second later he can hear someone storming down the hall.

There’s the rattle of a key in the lock. A second later, the door gets kicked open.

The guy who gave him the key strides in with a shotgun that Adam’s pretty sure is illegal. A couple of staff trail behind him, wide-eyed and sweating. They’re barely more than kids, probably the age he was when he joined the force. The manager’s red-faced and looks like he’s about to bust a blood vessel.“Where the fuck is he? Fuckin’ augs. Could’ve killed us all. We didn’t even _know!_ ” He crosses the room gun-first, brandishing it like it’s a cross and he’s looking for a vampire.

Standing cloaked on the fire escape, Adam tries not to sigh. He can hold his breath a good long while, but they wouldn’t hear it from there anyhow. He watches the manager, he’d guess, wave his gun around and run his mouth. Spares a thought that the guy’s trigger safety is appalling. He’s gonna get someone killed someday. That thought itches under his skin as he watches the idiot run circuits around the room, staff close behind but shrinking back.

“Adam?” Eliza’s voice is in his ear, softly. “We have to go.”

“I know.”

The manager’s fingers stray back to the trigger, and his employees back away fast, heart rates flying up -

Adam’s opened the window, through it and taking the gun before the guy can breathe. There’s a shout and swearing… They move so slow. They don’t have the augs, or the training.

He’s already back out. He empties the gun. Bends it in half and tosses it aside.

“Adam...”

He keeps moving, shouts of _fuckin’ clank psycho_ still ringing in his ears. “You got a plan C?”

 

 

 

 

Daniel calls him “a fucking unsubtle prick, what is _wrong_ with you,” but lets them pile back into the VTOL. Daniel insists, “No more resting up. Resting up gets people shooting at me. _Home_.” 

“Adam?” she says.

“Yeah.” He sighs. “I ought to sleep.” He runs a hand through his hair, and tries not to wince again. It’s been a while since he’s missed product this badly.

The flight goes faster than he pictured; familiarity creeps up on him. The lights of Prague were always new and alien, but after this past few months, the sight’s started to feel like an old friend. He lets himself relax in his seat. Looking out the window means he doesn’t have to look at Eliza. Or think about how she would’ve touched him, if she could. Or the sadness in her eyes. Or what the hell this is meant to mean. He’s pretty sure neither of them was made for this.

He’s pretty sure both of them want it.

...Fuck.

He’s shaken from that thought by them landing in his neighbourhood. It's probably for the best.

When he’s stepping out of the VTOL, shrugging on his coat, he pauses. Turns. “Thanks,” he tells Daniel.

Daniel nods and waves a hand to dismiss that, and then starts up the VTOL.

Adam watches the bird take off, wheeling up into the sky. He realises belatedly Eliza’s standing next to him, doing the same. He looks at her. “You’re not…?”

“I’ll interface with her systems soon. I've already found another location. There are new connections I can build.” She pauses, tilts her head, and adds. “You saved me. Us.”

He backs away from that. “That was you. I just...”

“It wouldn’t have been possible without you. Thank you.”

His mouth shuts, and he cuts his protest off. “Sure. I…" He tries to find the half of it. "Thanks for the vacation.”

Their eyes meet, and he knows that they’re both thinking of the hotel room. He swallows, and looks away.

“Adam – I’m sorry if I - ”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice is firm, and she halts. Blinks. He says, “It’s not just you. I want...” He swallows. “This.”

She watches him, and there’s surprise in her face, even as she must have had the readings. Her technology probably makes the CASIE seem like small-fry.

Maybe the words'll come to him. But now, they're just out of reach. “I just… think I need to...” He trails off.

“Yes.” She sounds sad, just for a second. “Be safe, Adam.” And there’s something in her voice…

He stops, and just _looks_ at her. She’s still in that simple coat and dress, still makeupless, hair blowing slightly in the breeze. And her face is earnest. “You mean that,” he says, quietly. He doesn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Always. You have no backup copy.” And she smiles slightly.

He takes the drive out of his pocket. “What do you want me to do with yours?”

“Keep it. Just… just in case.”

He folds his fingers around it, weighs it in his hands. Makes sure it feels safe there. He nods.

She looks to the horizon and then gets that distant look in her eyes, like she’s processing. And then it changes to another kind of darkness, like she's working up to something. “Actually…" She ducks her head, folds her hands. "There’s one more favour I’d ask of you.”

He’s not even sure he can say no to her anymore. He raises an eyebrow, and opens his mouth -

His Wayfinder pings. Coordinates. A building in the next neighbourhood, not far away.

She watches him levelly. “If you meant that… find me.”

And then she’s gone, and he’s left staring into thin air. He flexes his fingers. Puts the drive in his pocket. Then he jumps off the roof, lets Icarus bring him down, and starts walking.

 

 

 

 

It’s a warehouse down a side street, in a pretty residential neighbourhood. Almost in the middle of nowhere. There’s a simple keypad lock. He thinks a second. _0404,_ he types, on instinct. It beeps and then opens. He steps through, and the lock reengages behind him.

He’s in a dark room, but there’s… a faint glow. It resolves itself as he walks closer, to a glow and a metallic shadow in the middle of the room. He realises he’s staring at an NSN.

He weighs up his options. He could turn back. Keep the drive as a paperweight, and pretend he hasn’t been thinking about her. That nothing made him come here. Or…

He steps forward, and sits. Closes his eyes. He hears the NSN engage, and then he’s under.

 

 

 

 

He thinks he’s in an apartment, or at least the simulation of one. It’s dimly lit, like maybe there are pink LEDs somewhere, and he wonders vaguely who spent this much time programming mood lighting. There are windows, and he can see city lights, but it’s no skyline he recognises. When he tries to focus, they’re a little... off.

It's not just the surroundings. He stares down at his hands. Watches them flicker, just slightly, when he focuses. The shine is different when they’re holo. He wonders suddenly if this is how she feels. “Eliza?” he says. The echoes here are… weird.

When she speaks, it’s from behind him. “Adam. I’m glad you made it.” He turns, and she’s in what looks a little like a kitchen. He swears both she and it weren't there before. She walks toward him slowly, thoughtfully.

“Where… this isn’t somewhere real, right?”

“This is one of my datacores. I repurposed it.”

He stares at her. “To see me?”

“Yes.” She smiles. “I couldn’t think of a worthier cause.”

“Eliza...” he breathes, quieter now.

She stands next to him, and the apartment dissolves, breaking away around them. He stares at waterfalls of code: of _if_ conditions, of languages he’s never seen… It flashes in front of his eyes. He can’t even see the end of it. He looks up, and there’s more. Always more. He’s seen cathedral ceilings that were less vast. He reaches out a hand and the code streams through it, blue light on black metal. Shining like this, his augs almost look... like they belong.

“Where are we?” he asks. “Is this... you?”

“You came to see me,” she responds, amused.

He’s almost afraid to disturb anything, but he gets the feeling he won’t. He brings out a hand again and lets code dance over his fingers. “You thought _I_ was well-made?”

That soft laugh. “You are.”

He stares at her - the her next to him rather than the one dancing over his face, his fingers, lighting the tips of his eyelashes and making his augs glow. “I’ve seen a lot of systems over the years. This… I… I can’t even find the beginning of you.”

She reaches out, her fingers moving as if to brush his face, and he…

He inhales. “That was just my imagination, right?”

“Not entirely.” She smiles, something a little devilish in it, and then flattens her palm, cups his face.

It… tingles. Not quite the same, but.. close. And the sensation resolves, until he’d know it was a hand. “What… I, uh...”

“Haptic feedback.” Her thumb strokes across his face, and he breathes in at the sensation, feeling it blossom over his skin. “Here, I can interface with your augmentations.”

“It feels...” He only realises he closed his eyes when he opens them again. “I’m guessing you can’t...”

Her eyes are still intent on his face. “In a way. My code is interfacing with yours. It’s a sort of feedback. A change. I conceptualise it differently.” Her smile has something impish in it. “And I enjoy it. Very much.”

He reaches out, slowly. When she waits, he reaches out, wrapping his hand around hers. There’s… it’s almost solidity. Warmth. He looks down, watching the shine of metal against pale skin and the sheen of painted nails. He realises he doesn’t have to worry about breaking her. Not like this. But it’s been a long time since he’s been allowed to be gentle. He weighs her hand in his, and enjoys the feeling.

She’s watching, rapt. She tilts her head, steps closer.

He moves to return the gesture she gave him: he takes her face in his hands, gently, hands slipping into her hair. The strands part around his fingers, and in the back of his mind, he spares just a little amazement for that. Then he does what he wanted to do in their room.

Her lips are soft. Or she’s programmed this place to make him feel that. He doesn’t care. 

If someone told him a couple years ago he’d be kissing a computer, he would’ve assumed they were mocking him. Maybe asked if they were confusing him with the guy down the hall. Let alone if they told him it’d be like this. It’s uncertain at first, but then she echoes him, moves with him... Oh. He didn't know it'd be so... good. Different from the dream, but... good. Maybe better.

He moves back a little, gives her space, if that’s even possible here - and then he feels her hand on his, pressing his fingers to her cheek, keeping him with her. She pulls him back across and kisses him. And then she takes his face between those manicured hands and deepens it.

Something in his augs lights up, and a tingle goes down his spine, and then more, like someone’s touched his neck, his back. He shivers, surprised, gasping against her mouth. Pulls back. “What - ?”

“I can stop,” she says. And there’s an unsteadiness to her voice, like she feels it too. He's pretty sure that anyone human would be blushing, but she's fascinated. Unashamed.

“No. I… no.”

He kisses her again, and he feels it shudder through him until she’s around him, _in_ him… He can feel her between his ribs, tingling in his fingers, soft against his tongue. He loses himself in it, and pulls her closer. Breathes her in.

“Yeah,” he says eventually, when he steps back. He reaches out and twines some of her code between his fingers. Lets it fall back into place, and takes her face in his hands. “Yeah, I meant it. Beautiful.” He watches her light up.

She wraps herself round him. He pulls her into his arms, and doesn’t let go.


End file.
